A day sight-seeing. My ankle is paining me so I bought a ticket for one of the hop-on hop-off bus tours. The first one (the red-line) took me around Porto a little, then out to the beach and back along the coast. I went to the cathedral, got a stamp in my camino passport (somewhat cursorily delivered by the young man selling entrance tickets), and spent some time in the cathedral cloisters, up the tower, then into the cathedral proper. It was perhaps the least grandiose of all the cathedrals I've visited on this trip so far but the cloisters, with their extensive painted tile work, was quite nice.

Except for one 'tourist.' A man, around thirty, was dancing in a deliberately disrespectful fashion in the centre of the cloister courtyard, then went to leave, turned around and spat. Drugged, drunk or simply a jerk – or all three?

Cathedral Cloisters

Views from the Cathedral Tower

The Cathedral

I walked over the bridge – the Ponte Luis I – that I'd entered the city by on the previous evening, enjoying the views down to the River Douro a long (very long) way below. The bridge was just a walkway with a couple of tram tracks down the centre. And very crowded with tourists. As is Porto.

Perhaps an original, or more likely a replica, of boats used to transport port barrels, now repurposed for the tourist trade.

On the south side of the river is Gaia. Then on another bus (the blue-line this time) for a ride back towards the hotel.

I was out of sorts. I'd woken from bad dreams and never managed to shake off my negativity. I'm also disappointed in the setback to my ankle having hoped to have strengthened it sufficiently over the last few months so that it wouldn't bother me again. And a somewhat shabby room in an underwhelming although expensive hotel, in a tourist city, didn't help.

Dinner, in front of a tv, showing Portugal lose. Christian Ronaldo looked out of sorts as well.